Business of the House

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is clearly making very effective use of social media in his campaigning, and I commend him for that. I will make sure that his request is passed on to the Secretary of State.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The Manchester Evening News recently ran a piece highlighting premises in Greater Manchester with poor food hygiene ratings, and featured the Red Lion in Denton. Unfortunately for the Manchester Evening News, the Red Lion is under new ownership. The editor has apologised to the proprietors, but they tell me that it got the information from the gov.uk website. May we have a debate in Government time on how up to date the information on Government websites is, and whether, when information is incorrect, it can be corrected promptly?

[Chris Grayling]

Most importantly, before any newspaper publishes a list of people to name and shame them, it is good practice to telephone them first to put it to them. If the newspaper had done that, it would have been able to be corrected. I always want and expect gov.uk to be as up to date as possible, but tracking every change of management in an organisation that has had a poor report would be impossible. It is good journalistic practice to phone up and ask for a comment and then discover that the change has happened.